A Sign from God

My pondering for the week:

How do you tell a “sign from God” from regular ol’ crazy life?

This is what I’ve been mulling over the past week-ish.

A year or two ago, I started pondering the “idea” of going back to work full-time. Writing books, while totally the passion of my heart, doesn’t come with a very high (at all…) paycheck. In fact, according to the IRS, I operated on a “loss” last year even though I had a book come out. So my “job” is essentially costing ME money at this point. (The goal is once I get enough books out and enough sales to where that changes, obviously, but yeah. Obviously that needs to happen quickly, LOL!)

If you could take a peek at my budget, you would understand why the thought of going back to work continues to weigh heavy on my mind.

But each time I contemplate it… each time I open up careerbuilder.com and start to search, just to see what’s out there, I get this sick feeling in my belly.

At first I brushed it off as nerves. I’ve been “home” except for on-and-off consulting work for 4 years now. Maybe I just don’t WANT to go back to work….??

And then…. Annabelle gets sick. Usually within 24 hours. I kid you not. It has happened EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I’ve started thinking about going back to work.

Sometimes it ends in an ER visit.

Sometimes it’s just a fever and a peds visit.

But each time, it reminds me that, if I were working outside of the home, it’d be REALLY hard to care for her. And most jobs wouldn’t look kindly on a new employee being out with sick kids every few weeks.

So I trust God with our finances, and push the job thing aside.

Until something else happens that makes me wonder…. is it time NOW?

And each time…. Annabelle gets sick.:-(

Last week, I had like one day that I was bombarded with thoughts. Annabelle goes to kindergarten this August, so I’ll have a LOT more free-time during the day to actually get stuff done. YEAH. And in the back of my mind, I’m thinking… does God want me to go back to work NOW?

My own thoughts are so conflicted it’s hard to tell my reasoning from God’s speaking. Well, one day, a well-meaning person texted me a picture of a job opening. And on that same day, THREE recruiters sent me messages through Linkedin.

Three. 

On the same day.

It was… weird. A sign maybe?

I talked to my sister and told her my fears about Annabelle. Would my contemplating a job again make her sick again? Should I just ignore them?

She advised me just to leave it up to God, pray that Annabelle wouldn’t get sick, and well, that’s what I did. I replied back to each recruiter, not turning them down but also letting them know my VERY limited availability right now (super part-time/temporary), and that I pretty much wasn’t available more than that until fall. I felt a peace about my answer. I was leaving it in God’s hand.

Well, guess what.

2 a.m. rolled around…. I woke up to an Annabelle with a 104.2 fever.

GRRRR!!!

BUT!! Two hours later, her fever broke and she woke up happy and dancing and well, with only a lingering cough. She’s been fever free since.

So…. I’m trying to figure out this sign. Honestly, I’m almost scared to even THINK about going back to work… but am I overthinking signs? Am I putting God’s voice into something that is natural? Is it all just a coincidence? 

My sweet husband tells me to stop fretting about it. That we’ve got this TODAY, and let God worry about tomorrow. And obviously God doesn’t want me to get a job TODAY, so just focus on the here-and-now and leave the future to God.

And ya know? He’s right. I married a wise man, don’t you think? I REALLY need to stop fretting about it and just start trusting. Start trying to be the best mom I can be, TODAY.

I just have this tendency to want to “plan” and I look into the future and see it full of scary question marks. I want to get back to where we are being WISE and saving well for things like retirement and college for the kids and WEDDINGs (yikes!!!)  We were doing a pretty darn good job before my sweet princess came along. Now? Yeah, all of that is gone, and we are living in that mode of super thankfulness that God supplies our everyday needs.

So there is another pondering for you.

How do you balance being wise in money-planning for the future yet focus on trusting God TODAY and not fretting about tomorrow?

I don’t have an answer for it. Thus the reason I’m pondering it.

And since I think these are all things we ALL struggle with from time-to-time, I’d love to know YOUR musings on the matter.


And REMINDER! We’re walking in the CHD heart walk in May to support research for our heart kiddos… and we’d LOVE for you to help support us if you can! We hit our original goal thanks to some AMAZING donors that totally blew me away… so we went ahead and upped that goal to see if we can do even more! THANK YOU SO MUCH to those who gave! http://events.congenitalheartwalk.org/goto/kristaforannabelle